Federal, state and parish leaders are working on a three-pronged plan to govern the eventual transition from Gulf of Mexico oil spill "response" to "recovery," the federal government's point person for spill response said Thursday.

National Incident Commander Thad Allen met Thursday with Gov. Bobby Jindal, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles and several parish leaders to discuss the role each would play in the coming months after the blown-out Macondo well is finally sealed and there is less oil to mop up on the water's surface.

The meeting did not produce much in the way of definitive answers but was "more of a conversation of how we start to plan and talk about the process," Allen said.

State and parish officials have expressed frustration at being excluded from certain decision-making meetings about spill response plans that will impact their communities.

"Decisions on response efforts should not be made from the top down by the Coast Guard and BP," Jindal said in a statement following the meeting. "It's important for our coastal leaders to be part of all decisions that impact our coast."

The meeting produced three leading topics, Allen said.

First, the parties have decided that they will develop a set of principles and protocols to assess the oil spill cleanup after the well is killed. The agreement will spell out "how clean is clean," Allen said.

Each parish leader has been asked to revise the Coast Guard's current plan for cleanup and present his changes next week, St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis said.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz, The Times-Picayune archiveSt. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu return from a Coast Guard plane tour of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill site on Sunday.

Allen said the group also agreed that there needs to be a storm plan in place that accounts for less-severe storms. The current plan operates like an "on/off switch" Allen said, making little distinction between major hurricanes and more minor threats such as the recent Tropical Depression Bonnie. BP crews shut down spill response efforts in advance of the storm and were derided by local officials for their slow return after the relatively weak storm had passed.

Allen said the parties agreed that there are "less severe" steps that could be taken to make sure equipment is guarded during a minor storm but can be returned quickly to the scene.

Finally, the parties talked about ideas for how to manage the vessels of opportunity program as the work the boats had been doing comes to an end. The vessels of opportunity program re-purposes the boats of shrimpers, fishermen and others whose employment was affected by the oil spill so that they could be used on oil spill response, particularly skimming and placing boom. However, since the Macondo well was capped and no oil has flowed from it for almost two weeks, there is less need for that work.

Going forward those vessels could be involved in boom recovery and decontamination projects, Allen said. They might also be used to install a different kind of boom that is attached to crab traps. How they were redeployed would depend on their size and capabilities, as well as whether the boat's owners could return to their original jobs as fishing areas are reopened.

"As the operation shifts from oil spill response to recovery, the needs will change and we will have to decide the best use," Allen said.

The two-hour meeting was "frank, open, productive," Allen said.

"You know these parish presidents," Allen said. "Nobody held anything back."
A letter inviting parish presidents to the meeting asked each to provide, for discussion purposes, their top three concerns.

Davis said the meeting started out contentiously after the Coast Guard and BP presented the political officials with a plan for long-term clean up and recovery.

"I was the first one to speak up," Davis said. "I said, 'This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. We should have say in this.' "

Davis said he was particularly concerned that the plan they were presented did not include plans for responding to oil that may be traveling underwater and so far going undetected.

Allen and other officials at the meeting could not tell the presidents where the oil has gone, whether it is below the waterline or on the bottom.

"We kept stressing that we need to be in the discussion and the decision making," Davis said. "We did a lot of venting of our issues trying to get them to feel the way we do and to understand why we feel left out of the loop."

Interim Jefferson Parish President Steve Theriot said that the meeting cleared up some confusion, answered some questions but left many more unanswered.

Theriot said that the parish presidents were seeking assurances that there would be no change in the amount of equipment and people working to protect and cleanup their communities from the oil once the well has been permanently sealed.

"We as a parish have tried to maintain the fact that whatever time that we have to be exposed to the oil inundating our coastline and our estuaries, I want to have the necessary assets ready to deal with it," Theriot said.

Theriot said that he also expressed concerns about the financial impact on the parish and how it will be reimbursed for ongoing expenses as well as the ability to be made whole from the loss of sales and property tax revenues. With only $5 billion of the $20 billion BP fund being released a year for the entire region, Theriot said he wanted to know what happens when the demand is in excess of the $5 billion.

"No one has been able to answer that. I don't want to be caught expending funds if I'm not going to get reimbursed," he said. "Suppose it doesn't happen in six months. Do I have to get in line and wait two years? I'm told that is being worked out in Washington."

Jindal said the group also raised concerns about health funding for workers and the claims process and requested better access to claims data and protocol changes.

"We did not receive a firm commitment, but federal representatives did indicate that the U.S. Department of Justice shares our concerns," Jindal said.